Monthly Archives: June 2004

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is being hailed as a box office sensation after it grossed a little over $8 million on its opening night. By documentary standards, of course, that would be very good; but Moore’s film is no more a documentary than, say, The Passion. Fahrenheit 9/11 did manage to out-gross White Chicks, its main new-release competition. On the other hand, its opening weekend doesn’t shape up as well »

We mentioned yesterday that the Bush campaign has produced a video on John Kerry’s “Coalition of the Wild-Eyed.” It shows clips of Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Al Gore and Kerry, along with clips from two anti-Bush ads that appeared on MoveOn.org, both of which showed images of Adolf Hitler and equated him to George Bush. The ad is pretty effective; it’s the Bush campaign’s first effort, as far as I »

The U.S. pounded another Zarqawi hideout in Fallujah yesterday. The Associated Press reports that Iraqi clerics have begun speaking out against Zarqawi’s terrorist band. “What sort of religion condones the killing of a Muslim by another Muslim?” asked Sheik Abdul-Ghafour al-Samarai, a member of the influential Sunni group the Association of Muslim Scholars, during a sermon in Baghdad’s Umm al-Qura mosque. Sheik Ahmed Hassan al-Taha said at Baghdad’s al-Azimiya mosque, »

This morning’s Star Tribune reports that “Area man charged in terror case.” Because the Star Tribune makes the story inaccessbile after 14 days, I’m pasting in the story by Star Tribune reporters David Chanen and Greg Gordon below: A Lebanese national who allegedly told Minneapolis FBI agents he trained with Al-Qaida and knew three of its leaders, including one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq, has been charged in »

The new issue of the Weekly Standard has the theme of “summer reading.” The only book that it singles out for its unqualified recommendation is Steve Hayward’s The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry. Noemie Emery’s long review faithfully restates the book’s argument. Emery notes Hayward’s iconoclastic evaluation of the ostensible good works to which »

That’s what the L.A. Times says, anyway. Last night’s event in Los Angeles was a financial success, netting $5 million for Kerry’s campaign. Still, it didn’t do much for the Democrats’ reputation as hipsters. Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond performed a duet, singing “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” for the Dems’ heavy hitters: Wow, that’s a pretty hard act to top. Maybe the Republicans could get Frankie Valli and Petula »

Here’s an excellent piece from Daniel Henninger in the Opinion Journal. Henninger thinks that the recent beheadings could pose a political problem for John Kerry. Why? Because “after absorbing these beheadings, voters may start to ask themselves which man’s ideology has, if one may use this term, sufficient moral fiber to stand up to what they are seeing with their own eyes.” That’s not a happy question for Kerry to »

The University of North Carolina boasts a rising senior who blogs under the name of the goddess Athena at the new site Terrorism Unveiled, where she comments on the war on terrorism. Visit the site and be sure to check out Athena’s biographical page and photograph. Scroll down the biographical page and note that this spirited young lady takes her cue from Frederick Douglass: “The whole history of the progress »

FreeRepublic has a thread on the news that an important group supporting John Kerry has hired ex-felons to register voters door to door: “Felon-tainted liberal group refuses to come clean.” Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie has also released a statement on the subject: “It is disturbing that the voter mobilization arm of the Democratic Party is proudly hiring felons convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary to go house »

The AP reports that Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday evening the week of the convention: “Senator Miller to speak at GOP convention.” (Courtesy of Captain’s Quarters.) »

Charles Krauthammer notes the contrast between how we remembered Ronald Reagan and how we are remembering Bill Clinton. His conclusion: “Reagan makes Clinton look small.” I have to agree. With Reagan a few weeks ago the debate was whether he should get a little credit or a lot of credit for winning the cold war. With Clinton the big question seems to be who was more offensive, Ken Starr or »

England was leading Portugal 1-0 after 27 minutes in yesterday’s European Championship quarter final match, when 18 year-old sensation Wayne Rooney had to leave the match with a broken bone in his foot. Eventually, after 90 minutes plus 30 minutes of overtime, the score was 2-2. The match thus went to the tie-breaking penalty kick shoot out, which England lost 6-5. Poor David Beckham missed his second penalty kick of »

I have been a sometime fan of Larry McMurtry’s fiction and a reader of McMurtry’s occasional essays in the New York Review of Books. McMurtry is a prolific and successful novelist (Anything for Billy is the title of his 2001 novel about Billy the Kid), but when politics intrudes even his literary judgment is unreliable. This coming Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features McMurtry’s review of Bill Clinton’s memoirs. »

It’s hard for me to see how President Bush can withstand the current hate campaign against him. No American public figure, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, has ever been subjected to such a vicious, unprincipled assault. Yet recent poll data are looking surprisingly good. The latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll has the President leading John Kerry by six points overall, 48% to 42%, and by seven if Ralph »